Abstract

Here we report on the metal–semiconductor junction characteristics of a semiconducting ZnO nanowire grown directly on a metallic graphene film. The extracted specific contact resistivity of the graphene–ZnO nanowire contact (1.5 × 10−5 Ω·cm2) is comparable to that reported for Al–ZnO contacts. Based on the assumption that thermionic-field emission is the dominant mechanism, we obtained a zero-bias effective barrier height of 0.413 eV for the graphene–ZnO nanowire Schottky contact. We thus demonstrate that as a result of the enhanced tunneling at the contact, the graphene–nanowire contact exhibits near-ohmic current–voltage characteristics with a low contact resistance.

Received 30 May 2012Accepted 27 July 2012Published online 10 August 2012

Acknowledgments:

This research was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (2011K000627, 2012R1A2A2A01013734) and also supported by the National Science Foundation (ECCS 1118934).